Topics

The Order of the Phoenix is the private army Dumbledore raises when the Ministry will not fight Voldemort. It is not a school club and not a government office. Members take watches, pass messages, and hide people the Ministry is hunting. The first Order is the generation of James and Lily Potter. The second is rebuilt before Harry’s fifth year, meets at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, and loses Sirius Black in the Department of Mysteries. By the seventh book the Order is moving Harry out of Privet Drive and then going to ground as the Ministry falls. Severus Snape sits in it as Dumbledore’s spy, which is why a Death Eater mark and an Order mark can both be true.

Death Eaters are Voldemort’s named followers. The books treat the name as a faction, not a mood: a mark on the arm, a mask in a crowd, and orders that include murder. Bellatrix Lestrange is the believer. Lucius Malfoy is the patron who learns the mark is not a fashion. Peter Pettigrew buys his life with the Potters. Barty Crouch Jr spends a year wearing another man’s face to deliver Harry to a graveyard. Draco is given the mark as a punishment for his father and cannot finish the murder he is assigned. Regulus Black defects and dies taking a locket. Snape defects and stays close enough to be useful. Narcissa is not given a battlefield role; she is here because the family faction, and the lie she tells in the Forest, are part of the same story.

The Ministry of Magic is the wizarding government in Britain. In the seven books it is first a distant authority, then an obstacle, then an occupier. Arthur Weasley works in it and does not love it. Dolores Umbridge uses it to take the school. Nymphadora Tonks serves it as an Auror until the institution she serves starts hunting her friends. The timeline on this wiki follows the Ministry from Fudge’s refusal to believe in Voldemort’s return, through Scrimgeour, to the fall on the day of Bill and Fleur’s wedding, and to Kingsley Shacklebolt after the battle. This page lists the Ministry figures who have their own entries, not every clerk the novels name once.

Dumbledore’s Army is the student group Hermione names, half as a joke, after Umbridge stops real Defence lessons. They meet in the Room of Requirement. Harry teaches what he has already had to do: a Patronus, a shield charm, the spells that keep you alive. The group is a school story that becomes a war story. The same students are still in the castle in the seventh book, under Snape and the Carrows, and they are there when the battle starts. This page follows the members who have full entries here.